"[CDC] grabbed headlines recently with a study showing that one in four young women ages 14 to 19 was infected with [an STD].
"Yes, that seemed shockingly high. It's important to put the numbers in some perspective, though.
"The study included the four most common STDs: HPV or human papillomavirus, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and genital herpes.
"By far the most prevalent is HPV - 72 percent of the girls who had an STD had this virus. More than 20 million Americans carry the virus and 6.2 million are infected each year. Highly pervasive, as many as 80 percent of women will contract HPV by the time they reach their 50th birthday.
"But most HPV infections disappear naturally or are suppressed by the body without lasting effects. The CDC estimates that 70 percent of new HPV infections are gone within one year and 91 percent within two years.
"So HPV skews the stats. 'HPV does inflate the number because it causes the majority of infections and that majority may not cause any physical harm,' said John Douglas, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention. 'The last thing we want is for people to believe that 25 percent of girls have something that will bring them serious harm.'
"It remains that a small number of those cases, gone undetected for a long period of time, will result in cervical cancer, a devastating diagnosis.
"The CDC report is helpful for parents and teens to understand the scope of the danger of [STDs].
"It should spur them to seek more information, and to talk frankly about abstinence and about protection if a teen does have sex. It should prompt conversations about Gardasil, the relatively new vaccine that protects against the two strains of HPV that are responsible for more than 70 percent of cervical cancers.
"The CDC report should prompt talk, on many levels, with daughters and sons, about responsibility.
"Talk with your teens about responsibility."
04/05/08
UNITED STATES: The STD Scare for Teens
Source: Chicago Tribune; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention